Darien R. Wendell

FYI Company Member and Sex Ed Facilitator

Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health

darien r wendell is a sensitive, black, gender expansive, queer being & punk living in Chicago, and a transdisciplinary artist, curator, & educator. d is driven and inspired by the ongoing resistance work and legacies formed by peoples living and thriving within and beyond systems deliberately designed to demolish them. Beyond their work as a facilitator at ICAH and company member with For Youth Inquiry, darien is a member of Black Trans & Gender Non-Conforming (BTGNC) Collective, For the People’s Artist Collective, and one half of A Tribe Called Cunt, a squad of creatives uplifting trans & queer hip-hop culture.

Presentations from Facing Race 2018

What is suffocating our collective imagination around racism and reproductive injustice in America today? FYI Performance Company believes that cultural problems demand cultural solutions. In this hands-on session, FYI will lead an exploration of the relationship between reproductive and racial justice through story and game-based strategies that help keep us in difficult conversations for longer. Participants will learn FYI’s “4P’s of Participation” pedagogical framework — Pleasure, Perspective, Practice, and Shared Power — and ask, what tonic might artists provide? In the words of adrienne maree brown, “What are the ideas that will liberate all of us?” Participants will also explore the narratives within FORECAST, FYI's original play exploring racial and reproductive justice, which centers one young black woman's experience of deciding whether to parent in a broken world. Woven throughout the session will be ample opportunities for participants to share their own expertise, challenges and strategies from their specific work and contexts. (Previous theatre experience is not necessary!) At the end of this session, participants will be able to utilize FYI’s tools and their newly seeded skills to help build participatory, performance-based environments for exploration of difficult subject matter. Come dream a thriving world into existence, with the aid of FYI's unique participatory theatre tools, in and for community.